


Ozymandias: Ch3

by Fleshwerks



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Trespasser, Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 04:12:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13919130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fleshwerks/pseuds/Fleshwerks
Summary: The Inquisitor's long-standing suspicions are confirmed as he pushes through the Darvaarad.





	Ozymandias: Ch3

**Author's Note:**

> This work is unedited, and a middle chapter of a longer story which will be posted one day. I posted this particular one to motivate myself.

_We’re not fucking going._

_What?_ The Iron Bull pivoted.  
  
_You want to go through a room full of dragon and qunari, be my guest, I have a job to do._ They stood at a balcony overlooking the dragon. With the swing of the silent spirit blade and a surprise, Vivienne had cut down the two qunari manning the position, but with the mayhem below the slaughter had gone unnoticed. Heavy crossbows laid where their wielders had fallen. Spiridon had been surprised by how little resistance the qunari had put up in their stronghold and had for a moment begun to wonder just how lax the legendary discipline of the Qunari really is.

But none of them had anticipated a breach of their most hidden, secluded location, he realised, and in the pen below the Viddasala’s secret weapon showed its captors the meaning of her name.

Ataashi, they called it, a Glorious One.

She’d torn a chain from the wall and it clattered every time she moved, wings tied onto her back with red rope. Tens of qunari laid strewn across the ground, bodies broken to pulp under her feet. Along the wall and behind a ring of searing flames around her to keep her contained stood more hesitant qunari, spears and crossbows trained at her, watching the dragon thrash, snap, and vomit her caustic poison at them. Yet nobody moved.

 _She_ , the Iron Bull said, _is how they made gaatlok this fast. I can smell it all over her._

And Spiridon understood. Rather more qunari die for the cause than kill the dragon. It spoke of stunning cooperation and will to have trapped, herded and bound one in the first place, young though it looked.

 _Yeah_ , Spiridon agreed. He could smell it too in the poison she spat.

Suddenly a familiar voice roared on another balcony, commands from the Viddasala’s broken mouth.

 _There she is_ , Spiridon said, and stretched the fingers of his burning hand.

 _Want me to shoot her?_ Varric offered dryly.

Just across them, all the answers so close, but between him and the Viddasala stood a dragon, and more lethal yet, a cohort of trained, capable qunari on their home turf.

 _I don’t suppose there’s a way around_ , Vivienne said.

But before Spiridon could recall the path they took to get to the balcony, a deafening roar shattered his thoughts, noise followed by new bellowed commands. He didn’t understand the language but the words were seasoned with fury. Command and reprimand, and when he looked down he saw a spear lodged in the thrashing glory’s neck. Not deep enough to grievously wound her, but with the ring of torches around her, even a drop of pain in a cup already full could spur her to break her bonds and tear the place apart. The qunari whose resolve had broken cowered at glory’s wrath and even more so at his own failure, backed away, breaking the formation, the wall of flesh, leaving doubt behind that now bled into others. It was the nature of fear. It spread like a plague.

 _Shoot the dragon_ , Spiridon said, staring glassy-eyed at the unfolding nightmare.

 _What?_ Varric rasped.

 _Shoot the fucking dragon_ , Spiridon said. There was no anger in his voice, his eyes were fixed on the Viddasala across the room, whose eyes were fixed on nothing in particular. It was all falling apart, he could almost hear the gears grind in her head, her gaze turned inward. Darvaarad was falling. Hasaan Ataashi-an was crumbling. Dragon’s Breath was slipping from her grasp. Too many targets, too little time. The Viddasala was making a decision. Spiridon eyed the narrow slit in the stone wall where stairs ascended into the darkness, a way up.

 _Do it. Now_ , he ordered.

Hesitantly Varric primed his crossbow, rested it on the railing and aimed it at the dragon’s head. He held his breath. And fired.

The bestial scream that followed felt like a punch to the gut, it shook the very stone the walls were made of, stabbed at the ears, doubling over the Qunari soldiers surrounding the beast, slamming hands on their ears, dropping their spears and shields. The bolt had pierced the Ataashi’s eyelid and destroyed her eye, but not killed her. Blood ran down the side of her head as she thrashed, stumbled over the torches cooking her feet and underbelly, filling the room with the sick smell of burnt scale and flesh. Broken and burnt bodies of the Qunari fell at her fury.

 _Go. Go down_ , Spiridon urged his companions, glancing at the Viddasala again as they went. The Viddasala stared back, completely still in the chaos. He couldn’t make out her expression, but he didn’t have to. A scream as fierce as the dragon’s below told him everything he needed to know. And then she shouted down at the remaining men, and Spiridon looked down and saw the remaining Qunari routing, and the Viddasala disappearing through the door behind her.

Shit, Spiridon thought. He was so sick of chasing the Viddasala, only to have her escape again, taking her answers with her. He stormed out of the balcony and down the stairs, three steps at a time, anchor hand flaring up through the soaked bandages, lighting the way in the dark at the cost of terrible pain.

He caught up with the others, but they hadn’t moved past the dragon that stood between them and the Viddasala, her saarebas and her armed cohort that stood in safety on the other side of the heavy portcullis, having used some other path in their labyrinthine stronghold to leave the pen.

 _Wait!_ The Inquisitor shouted across the room, and for once the Viddasala obliged, the Saarebas behind her looming over them, more qunari joining the cohort until the entire bridge was full of what remained of the troops, leading all the way to an intact, activated eluvian at the far end of the narrow bridge.

The Ataashi lied awkwardly on one side in the circle of broken torches that no longer burned. Her wings were still strapped on her back and smoke was rising from the feet of the creature as she howled mournfully, bloodrage giving way to exhaustion and pain.

 _Let’s go_ , Spiridon said, clutching his spear with the good hand, with the anchor hand hanging uselessly at his side.

They edged the wall in a row, trying to stay as far away from the wounded beast as possible. Even bound and burned, a dragon was most dangerous at the door of its death. They stepped over the bodies of the qunari that had not managed to get out of the dragon’s way, their bodies reeking and smoking from the corrosive poison they’d been showered with. It ate its way through armor and flesh and bone, and hissed angrily on the floor, slowly eating its way through the stone. A single errant step would spell their death. At least the Ataashi remained where she was, still howling, thrashing her tail, her remaining eye following their movement. Two times she lifted her heavy head with sawn-off horns and red ropes, snapped her jaws and gurgled, but she’d spent all her venom, and all that burst forth was dreadful screams.

At last they made it to the portcullis, and the qunari cohort on the other side pointed their spears and crossbows at them in unison, but the Viddasala stayed their hands with a gesture. Eyeing Vivienne, she stepped closer to the gate, and met the Inquisitor face to face. She regarded his burning hand, then locked her eyes on the Inquisitor’s. Varric watched the dragon, but both Bull and Vivienne stood on either side side of the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor’s and the Viddasala’s eyes met.

 _Hissrad_ , the Viddala said, addressing the Iron Bull instead. _Turn away from Fen’harel’s pack, return to your kith and your place._

 _No thank you_ , ma’am, the Iron Bull said simply.

 _Bas_ , the Viddasala spat under her breath. _A traitor’s death for you._ She turned to Spiridon.

 _I’ve had enough with your hunt, your teeth are broken, Inquisitor, you’ve so little time left._ Behind her the Qunari marched on through the eluvian.

Tell me, what are the lies of the agents of Fen’harel made of that you embrace them willingly though all they’ve brought you is terror, she looked at his arm again, and he curled his aching fingers into a fist.  _What convinced you to give your life to their cause? Do you think you’ll have a place in the world of chaos he’ll bring about? Is that what his agent whispered in your ear all those years? Answer, Inquisitor, that is all you need to do._

Spiridon opened his fingers again and narrowed his eyes at the bright light of the anchor.

 _Who whispered into my ear?_ Spiridon asked himself more than the Viddasala. Suddenly, all the questions he’d been dying to ask seemed irrelevant.

_You gain nothing from protecting him, Inquisitor. You’re another body in the churn, another corpse piled up for his agents to get closer to the sky after they fumbled their first attempt. Solas travelled with you for years, did he not? He gave Corypheus Fen’harel’s orb, did he not? And when things didn’t go according to plan, he raised you from the dust. Your hand burns with the key to the sky, and in its hunger it will eat you whole. Is what would have come, if he’d succeeded the first time, worth your life? All lives?_

Solas. He almost missed his name on her lips as his head filled with thick fog.

The Viddasala’s mouth parted and her eyes widened, and she stepped closer to the portcullis, staring intensely at the silent Inquisitor.

 _You didn’t know_ , she said softly, surprised.

 _Solas?_ Vivienne replied instead of the stunned Inquisitor. She let out an incredulous, humorless laugh.

A cacophony of shouts exploded in Spiridon’s head as the Sorrows stirred at their host’s new knowledge, and suddenly the words he’d only heard whispered so quietly for years were said loud and clear. The voices knew the name, and they knew what he was, and they rejoiced in hearing the name of one of their gods, their wills suddenly focused. For two years they waited for the Inquisitor to put together the pieces of the puzzle and hear the name said out loud and sure, instead of in shy whispers full of suspicion, choked out by skepticism.

Though he had seen Mythal stand in front of him, holding his strings in her hand, she’d had a body and the face of a woman of flesh and bone. But Mythal was no more than a corrupted sliver of a spirit. A god intact, weak but whole…  
Some suspected, no one could truly believe; with unforeseen horrors unleashed upon the world not one would entertain a thought that a god walked in the skin of a man beside mortals.

The door that had been cracked open had been blown off its hinges, and things that had been hidden in the vaults behind flooded his brain. Solas became more than a name, it became an essence. No longer was it five letters to call a man by, but something that was bursting with the wills and pleas, dreams, hopes, hatred of the millions both alive and the long dead. Solas who had known the magic that had left entire Thedas in ruins. Solas, who knew it intimately enough to force the anchor to obey. Solas who walked the dreams and told tales no one alive could not have known.

The Viddasala had grown tired of waiting for the Inquisitor’s answer. She scowled at his silence, shook her head and stepped back, motioning her personal guard towards the tail of the troops marching through the eluvian.

 _We will undo what you’ve wrought,_ she said, and turned to follow the cohort.

 _Not an agent,_ the Inquisitor managed quietly at last. He jerked forward.

 _Viddasala!_ He shouted. _Turn your troops back, now!_ He grabbed onto the the portcullis.

 _I will not,_ the Viddasala said. _You have proven to be unfit to protect this world, Inquisitor, and for that you will die. We will do what you have failed to do, we will see what you have neglected to see. The world watched the hammer when it should’ve been fearing the wielder. Take comfort, Inquisitor, in knowing that your master will perish and you will die free._

He’s Fen’harel. He is the Dread Wolf. You go through that eluvian and all of you will die! He slammed the heel of his good hand against the iron in a futile effort to grab her attention, stall them.

 _Stop!_ He turned to Vivienne, then Bull. _Do something!_ But Bull shook his head.

 _Fen’harel?_ Bull asked. _You’re saying our Solas is your Dread Wolf._ They watched as the last of the qunari disappeared through the eluvian. Behind them the Ataashi still wailed, though weakly now.

 _Yeah, and I fucking knew it all along_ , Spiridon said, pulling his sleeve over his anchor hand. He hadn’t noticed the pain strangely subside as the nerve endings burning away at last, though as the anchor crept up his arm it still found fresh, responsive flesh to eat.

 _I just wouldn’t believe it._ Didn’t want to.

\---  
_Get the gears_ , Spiridon said, wearily waving at the sides of the closed portcullis.

 _Shouldn’t we go back to the Winter Palace?_ Varric said.

 _No_ , Spiridon spat. No point now. I don’t have enough time left. All his thoughts seemed muted, and the Sorrows had stopped shouting, it was all just red, thick fog now. He closed his eyes, and found something cold and serene in this utter defeat.

 _Open the gate_ , he said and pulled a knife from the sheath strapped across his chest. _Something we should do._

Spiridon Lavellan looked at Ataashi and inhaled deeply, groaning at the pain in his side, like a blade between his ribs, and slowly, tentatively walked towards the dragon.

 _Look at you_ , he thought to the sound of the heavy gate rising slowly. Ataashi was a small dragon, young, barely half the size of the great beasts he’d seen flying overhead in his travels in the South. The dragon turned her head just enough to turn her good eye towards the approaching Inquisitor, too exhausted to lift it completely, her jaw dragging across the stone, and laid it down with a grunt. She bared her massive teeth and spat at the Inquisitor, but what little venom there was left in her oozed out of the glands in her mouth and dropped to the ground through her teeth.

Spiridon straightened his back, avoiding the pools on the ground, stepping over the mangled torches and the dead qunari, and looked her in the eye, then at the ropes that tied down her tattered wings.

 _Boss-man, what are you doing?_ The Iron Bull shouted, but the Inquisitor ignored him. He spotted a rope that was at the verge of breaking, only a handful of threads holding it together.

He looked at the dragon again, and then took another step closer. The creature scoffed at him, her great tail raising and then hitting the ground with a violent thump, but this time she didn’t snap. She stared, and Spiridon focused his gaze on the rope. With hesitation he placed his hand on the stem of her wing, and slid it along the red rope. No sudden moves.

 _Boss-man, we need to go, now_! Bull bellowed. Spiridon ignored him, even though he was right, and he was costing them all precious time.

 _There we go_ , he said gently, feeling the beast’s hot and laboured breath at his back. He lifted the knife to the frayed rope and began cutting apart fibers, one by one, slowly and deliberately. In the distance, his companions watched, struggling to hold the cranks and keep the gate open, in dead silence.

Spiridon cut through the final fiber and the rope snapped, releasing the wings, and the Ataashi lunged forward. Spiridon stumbled back and away, but fell painfully, and found himself face to face with a mouth full of teeth, foul breath and venom that ate through things living and dead. The dragon’s wings fell limply to the floor, hanging uselessly from her ridged back. She bled where the ropes had cut into the more tender parts of her flesh.

Spiridon remained completely still, heart pounding in his chest. Stupidest thing he’d ever done out of some sense of sentimentality and defeat towards the most dangerous animal the world had ever known, bound and chained, burned and squeezed for every ounce of what she had to give. To be cast used and then cast aside for someone else’s greater purpose. Necessary sacrifice, they said, as if it was meant to comfort the one sacrificing, and not the one benefiting.

But the dragon did not open her great maw. Her nostrils twitched as she inhaled the scent of the Inquisitor, and let out a low gurgle.

The gate was open, his companions hanging onto the gears, struggling to keep it open.

 _Go_ , Spiridon urged. And she did. With a pained groan the Ataashi struggled onto her scorched forelegs, and crawled and pulled towards freedom and the great, cold moon that cast its indifferent light onto this tragedy. Her wings dragged along the floor, but her eyes were fixed on the horizon, ignoring Vivienne, Varric and the Iron Bull entirely.

She stalled under the portcullis, looked up and opened her jaws, inhaling deeply the gentle night wind, collapsed, and relief swept over her as she died.

Vivienne’s arms shook violently as the strain of the crank got the best of her. She cried out as the pegs of the crank pulled free of her grasp and the heavy upper part of the portcullis fell onto the dragon carcass’ scaled back with a sickening crunch. The Iron Bull let go of his crank, and the lower portcullis sprung up, its spikes burying themselves in the dragon’s belly, but her weight kept it down.

Spiridon stared at the grotesque display unfolding in front of him, stunned.

He got up, walked wordlessly to the gate, refusing to look at his companions, and climbed awkwardly through the gap the dragon’s carcass provided between the iron teeth of the gate.

 _Abelir, da’set_ , he murmured, head low as he left the Darvaarad and its latest victim behind, heart breaking for the creature, for those who had died for one man’s pride, and for himself for whatever waited him beyond that cursed gate to the ruins of Elvhenan.


End file.
